BMBF funds TransHyDE project Helgoland with up to 12.48 million euros

Helgoland/ Essen/ Hamburg/ Erlangen/ Kassel/ Bremen – The future begins now: With up to 12.48 million euros in funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), research and development work in the TransHyDE project Helgoland is entering the active phase. The common goal of the project partners: The establishment of a hydrogen transport chain from the offshore area near Helgoland via the ports to the hydrogen consumers on the mainland. To this end, technologies for the storage and transport of green hydrogen in organic carrier fluids, LOHCs – liquid organic hydrogen carriers, are being researched and developed, among other things. The project is part of the BMBF’s flagship hydrogen project TransHyDE and is part of the broad-based AquaVentus initiative, which bundles all hydrogen activities around Helgoland’s southern port under the name AquaPortus.

Joint path to a climate-neutral future
“We are delighted about the recognition and the boost for the start into the hydrogen age with our project partners in the ports of Hamburg and Helgoland. AquaPortus is an important building block for our entire AquaVentus family to bring green future technologies to market maturity on the way to climate neutrality,” says Helgoland’s mayor and AquaVentus chairman Jörg Singer.
“We are excited to be able to further test all the benefits of our LOHC technology in the TransHyDE Helgoland project. Together with the Helgoland utility company, we are thus additionally enabling the conversion of the island’s heat supply from heating oil to CO2-neutral LOHC waste heat on and for Helgoland. And by setting up a LOHC release plant in the Port of Hamburg, we are not only achieving a flexible, safe, simple and efficient green hydrogen supply in the surrounding area in a timely manner, but we are also already creating the first building block for the large-volume import infrastructure as defined by the National

hydrogen strategy of the German government,” explains Rafael Schmidt, Head of Business Development at Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies.
Transporting hydrogen via the organic hydrogen carrier LOHC brings many advantages for logistics, emphasizes Karin Debacher, TransHyDE project manager at Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA). “With the TransHyDE project Helgoland, HHLA wants to develop the requirement for a sustainable and economical LOHC transport chain. We also want to gain practical experience with the transport and dehydrogenation of hydrogen using LOHC,” says Debacher.
On the occasion of the funding announcement in the TransHyDE project, Thomas Birr, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer for E.ON, points out the importance of green hydrogen, especially for SMEs: “E.ON offers solutions for decarbonizing their heating and cooling generation as well as their production processes, especially to the many SMEs in Europe. Forward-looking projects based on green hydrogen will play an increasingly important role here in the future.”
All project partners, including the municipality of Helgoland, Versorgungsbetriebe Helgoland GmbH, E.ON, Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA), Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies, Tewis Projektmanagement GmbH as well as GASCADE Gastransport GmbH, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Applied Materials Research IFAM and the AquaVentus coordination office are now looking forward to their joint work in the innovative project.

Next steps in research and development
TransHyDE Helgoland focuses on the question of how the green hydrogen generated at sea can be stored and transported to consumers on the mainland. “That’s why we’re working together to lay the groundwork for initial pilot and stand-alone solutions for LOHC use, which we will then implement on a demonstrator scale,” explains project coordinator Christoph Tewis. Various application possibilities and scenarios will be illuminated, compared and evaluated during the research and development phase. “Our goal is to have a concrete implementation plan for large-scale implementation of hydrogen conversion, storage and utilization both on Heligoland and on the mainland, as well as to investigate large-volume, trans-regional transport chains based on LOHC,” Tewis added. Furthermore, in addition to the work on Helgoland and the mainland, extensive scientific investigations are planned by Fraunhofer IFAM to store and transport hydrogen in the form of LOHC.

About AquaVentus
The project family around the AquaVentus initiative includes numerous sub-projects along the value chain from the production of hydrogen in the North Sea to its transport to customers on the mainland. These coordinated consortia synchronize demand and generation, enabling a rapid market ramp-up. The AquaVentus project family includes, for example: the development of offshore wind turbines with integrated hydrogen production (AquaPrimus), a large-scale offshore hydrogen park (AquaSector), a central offtake pipeline (AquaDuctus), port infrastructures and transport chains (AquaPortus), maritime hydrogen-based applications (AquaNavis), and a research platform (AquaCampus).

About the hydrogen lead projects
The hydrogen lead projects form the largest research initiative to date of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) on the subject of energy transition. In the industry-led lead projects, industry and science are jointly developing solutions for the German hydrogen economy: series production of large-scale electrolysers (H2Giga), production of hydrogen at sea (H2Mare), technologies for the transport of hydrogen (TransHyDE).

The lead project TransHyDE evaluates and tests hydrogen transport solutions. A hydrogen economy cannot function without a suitable transport infrastructure, so four transport technologies will be advanced in demonstration projects: (1) hydrogen transport in high-pressure vessels, (2) hydrogen-liquid transport, (3) hydrogen transport in existing and new gas pipelines, and (4) transport of hydrogen bound in ammonia or the carrier medium LOHC.

More information is available on the BMBF website at
https://www.wasserstoff-leitprojekte.de/leitprojekte/transhyde

Press contact
TransHyDE project team, Stephanie von Neuhoff
Municipality of Helgoland, Jörg Singer
Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies GmbH, Birka Friedrich
HHLA, Annette Krüger
E.ON, Marvin Macke
Fraunhofer IFAM, Martina Ohle
AquaVentus Coordination Office, Benita Stalmann